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THE 

ISLES OF SHOALS 

IN SUMMER TIME. 

, ■# 

WILLIAM LEONARD GAGE. 



THE 



ISLES OF SHOALS 



SUMMER TIME. 



WILLIAM LEONARD GAGE. 



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HARTFORD: 

THE CASE, LOCKWOOD & BRAINARD CO, 

1875. 



rCOPVRIGHT SECURED. 



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TO MY 

Healthy, Athletic, and Kindly Brethren 

OF the 

Hartford Pulpit. 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. 



The Isles of Shoals appear at their fairest if you approach 
them on a bright, sunshiny day, sailing some ten or twelve 
miles outward from old Portsmouth, in a steamer which leaves 
that pleasant little city every morning and every afternoon. I 
remember when it was not so easy and so cheery a way 
thither : for when I used to go down in the summer time to 
the Shoals, as they are called for short, there lay at the foot 
of State street the little sloop Sibyl, which ran daily, "wind 
and weather permitting." The wind and weather used to per- 
mit the run to be favorable one way, but were very likely to 
"go back " on you the other way. If you had a good run out, 
you were likely to have a calm coming back, and of all the 
mischances which can befall him who goes to sea for pleasure, 
a calm is the worst. For in the first place there is no progress 
forward or backward; and a good head-wind has some motion 
in it even if it does take you the wrong way. In the next 
place night is likely to come upon you and leave you bedless, 
supperless, and cold ; in the next place, the toiling with oars 
to propel a sloop of twenty tons is exhilarating neither to the 
rowers nor the onlookers ; and lastly, of all places favorable 
for sea-sickness, the best is that lazy roll of the sea in a calm ; 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. 



a man who can stand a stiff gale will succumb to the deep 
ground swell. So it is with great delight that a yearly visitor 
to the Shoals, as I have been for fifteen summers, should hail 
such a sign of progress, as the substitution of a fine steamer, 
two of them in fact, for that lazy-going sloop of the past. 
Once it was an event of significance when a dozen went out ; 
now it is not uncommon to take out three hundred in a single 
day ; and you no sooner disembark from the Eastern Railroad 
train at Portsmouth depot than the shouts of " Carriage for 
the Shoals boat " remind you that the little decaying city by 
the sea derives no small part of its present commerce as an 
entrepot for the Isles of Shoals. 

You embark in the snug and admirable little steamer, and 
find yourself among very genteel and well-appointed tourists, 
all bound for those fairy-like islands out in the Atlantic. And 
as you run down the Piscataqua you might almost fancy your- 
self on a Scotch or Swiss lake were it not for the trifling lack 
of mountains. Certainly for vivid greenness of grass plats, 
and clean rocky edge of shore, and fantastic cleavages in the 
granite coast, and distant and almost enchanting views among 
the islands of Portsmouth harbor, and the quaint aspect of the 
picturesque old city, and the trim, governmental neatness and 
precision of the Navy Yard, and the half ruins of the forts at 
the mouth of the river, pretending to guard it from invaders, 
and the utter ruins of the earthworks, thrown up there in 1812, 
now grass grown, and rounded, and pleasant, I know of no 
steamer ride in the United States more delightful. The cur- 
rent of the Piscataqua sweeps you down with the speed of 
seven miles an hour if the tide is outward, or stems it with the 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. 



same speed if it is inward, and tosses up all sorts of fantastic 
eddies, and miniature maelstroms, along the narrow channel. 
Once past the mouth of the river, away out on the eastern 
horizon, you descry a low broken line, generally half concealed 
in the haze, apparently "without form and void," which you 
are told is the Isles of Shoals. Ten miles away they offer 
as little promise as a New Hampshire pasture. But as you 
approach them, and leave behind you Newcastle light and the 
pretty and trim Whale Rock light, on a solitary rock just 
large enough to support it, the hazy line out on the eastern hori- 
zon begins to be broken up into fragments; and bye-and-bye a 
few houses, two enormous hotels, a tiny church, a light house, 
several schooners at anchor, and a group of rocks, emerge 
out of the tangle, and you have the Isles of Shoals before you. 
Now I fully admit that you must see these in a sunny light, 
or else they are nothing, and worse than nothing ; and I have 
a friend, who, because he went in a rainstorm and returned in 
a rainstorm, believes that there is no place on the globe more 
forlorn and empty of all interest than those same islands. And 
when I remind him that I go thither yearly, he asks, is not 
life hard enough, and dreary enough, any way, without adding 
to it by going down to the Isles of Shoals ? Ah ! sunshine is 
every thing ; in the world outside of us, and in the world in- 
side of us, and you want sunshine of course to make the 
Shoals pleasant. But given sunshine, and the place is just 
glorified. What do you ask better for a few. days than a clean 
little island out at sea, with no dust, with the thermometer 
nailed at 70, a fine breeze every day, and that breeze, let it 
come from N., E., S,. or W., laden with the ocean's coolness. 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. 



springing up in the morning after breakfast, and going down 
with the sun, leaving all still for the evening stroll, or the quiet 
chat on the hotel piazza, the island on which you live being but 
a seven minutes' walk from end to end, and a four minutes' 
walk from side to side ; the whole of clean granite, intersected 
with a basaltic dyke, and the shores rent and shattered into a 
thousand forms, with crags, and gullies, and gentle slopes, 
and tiny beaches, and great scattered rocks, which dash the 
waves into ten thousand foamy torrents ; and little nestling 
pools, where the sea-life unfolds itself in its clear and trans- 
parent beauty ; and where you can sit for hours, and watch 
the plants and the creatures which thrive in those crystal 
basins ? And then to lie on those high rocks, sixty feet above 
the ocean, and look out seaward and watch the play of color 
on the water, as the clouds flit between the sun and the sea, 
and the multitudinous gleam of the sails from a hundred 
yachts and all manner of sailing craft which go by, is to have 
all the joy of an ocean voyage, without any of its dangers or its 
discomforts. And then the old historical associations which 
cluster round these isles, from the day of Capt. John Smith 
who discovered them and gave them his name — the original 
John Smith, of Pocahontas memory, and whose marble monu- 
ment still graces one of the group — and all these 250 years 
and more of history, during which these islands have been full 
of life, and adventure, of tragedy and comedy, of culture and 
refinement, at one time, and then at another of savagery and 
barbarism ; and then the scene of to-day, with the numbers of 
intelligent people gathered there to enjoy this all, and to sit 
on the rocks in leisurely contentment, and talk together, not 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. 



about the Shoals alone, but about life, these varied experiences 
of ours, these hopes and expectations, these isles of the fancy 
which lie out yonder in the horizon of our thought, in the sun- 
shine, and which we long to reach and have translated to clear 
visions and to blessedness, — Oh, all this to see and to enjoy is 
what you find at the Isles of Shoals. 

There are several islands of the group ; but from the hotel 
point of view there are only two : Appledore and Star. Of 
these Appledore is the larger and contains somewhat over 
four hundred acres, while Star has but about a hundred and 
fifty. I always go to Star ; partly because it is roamed over 
with less fatigue, partly because it is more open to the grand 
southeastern swell, partly because one of the best hotels in 
the United States stands upon it, partly because its historical 
relics are the most noteworthy, and partly because I always 
have stopped there ; beginning with the Old Atlantic House, 
famous for its ^zhowders, its fried fish, and its doughnuts, and 
ending with the splendid and sumptuous Oceanic, with all its 
modern splendors. Star island reveals the secret of its name 
— it is star-shaped ; and so if you want to walk a little way or 
a long way, you may have your own way, and reach some se- 
questered cove in a minute, or some projecting point, after a 
ramble which is not insignificant. I have often been on Ap- 
pledore, a favorite place for some, but the distances are 
rather too magnificent, and I am always glad to get back to 
dear, cosey Star again. 

The names of the group are not without interest and sig- 
nificance. Appledore, now so nobly called, did not always 
wear so euphonious a title, and even in the mouths of the na- 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. 



tive Shoalers, it bear its old name Hog Island, doubtless given 
from the resemblance to a hog's back which has been noticed 
in landscape all through history, and an instance of which the 
schoolboy will recall in the Anabasis. Another island de- 
lights in the name of Smutty Nose, from the thick coat of sea 
weed which adorns its shores. Another is called White Island, 
from its color. Another is Duck Island, and the swarm of 
gulls hovering over it reveals the slight mystery of the name. 
Cedar and Malaga, bring back the time when Spanish ships 
were wrecked on these rough shores, and yielded up their 
treasures : and all the others have some bit of local history or 
coloring. There are nine of them as I remember them, but 
most of the nine are quite insignificant. They differ from 
each other though, in some particulars which I have noticed, 
but cannot explain. At Londoner's, for example, I have found 
shells and sand and on that island alone : at White Island there 
are beautiful pebbles, wonderfully clear and varied : on Star 
there are neither pebbles nor sand. There is probably a cause 
for this ; but I have not been able to find it out. 

What was the original reason of these islands being called 
the Isle of Shoals it is impossible now to tell. For a long 
time it was supposed that Egg Island, near Nahant, was so 
called because of its oval shape ; later, because of the number 
of gull's eggs found upon it by the casual visitor ; and later 
still, the true reason was hit upon; that it was called Egg Isl- 
and because it was laid there. I have already mentioned that 
the Shoals first bore the name of their discoverer, Capt. John 
Smith ; and on the oldest map of New England they are set 
down as Smith's Isles. They might have been called Shoals, 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. II 



from the vast " Shoals " or schools of fish, mackerel and cod, 
which have from time immemorial been found in those waters ; 
but more probably from the shoalness of the ocean there- 
about. In fact, between the islands and the main land, there is 
not water enough for a first-class ship to sail without peril, 
and even in the little Sibyl, years ago, I have knocked against 
the bottom in the most alarmingly suggestive manner, while 
crawling homeward in a fog, and by the aid of ash and beechen 
sails. And all around the Shoals, (for people there do not use 
the words the Isles of Shoals, but simply Shoals,) there are 
reefs of thinly covered rocks which are full of danger. Some 
bear names, such as Shag, Mingo, Anderson Rock, Square 
Rock, but many are not named, and are only revealed by the 
suspicious curl of white over them when the swell comes in 
from the ocean, telling the story of resistance a few feet be- 
low the surface, whose only sign is the cresting foam. But it 
is a dangerous place for navigation ; and so in all the past, 
wrecking has been a great business among the Shoalers, and 
many a proud ship has been hurled against those rocks to per- 
ish. On the low dangerous coast of Smutty Nose, within the 
memory of the oldest people, the fine Spanish ship Sagunto 
went to pieces ; and to-day, one of the most affecting sights 
of the islands is the long row of graves where lie the bodies of 
those shipwrecked men. Away, far away from home, they 
found tender and Christian burial at the hands of another 
race ; and there so far away from their kindred they sleep 
side by side. No inscription marks the place ; a little rough 
piece of granite at the head of each grave is the only monu- 
ment. Near them sleep the generations that have lived on 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. 



that island, which is now in the hands of the little remnant of 
Shoalers who survive. Three or four old brown, weather- 
beaten houses stand together on the island, one of which has 
a pathetic interest as the scene of the Wagner murder three 
or four years ago, whose details I will not recapitulate ; but 
the largest one of the group has a ceaseless interest to me in 
connection with a certain old Captain Haley, who lived in it, 
and who, in his day, was a man of mark and power ; one of 
those natural heroes whom God raises up in every community, 
men born to command. I suppose that they who were his co- 
temporaries, and who used to call him Old King Haley, did not 
see in him the ruler so much as the tyrant ; and I have no doubt 
that like some few other men, whom I have known or heard 
of, he had his natural human weaknesses ; but his record, as 
it comes to us to-day, is a singularly fine one. That Old King 
Haley has been to me for many years, one of those men whom 
1 have set up in my heart to honor ; and finding his grave- 
stone fallen over a few years ago, I had it re-set and made 
comely, out of the great regard I bear him. For in that 
southeastern second story window of his house, a fine mansion 
in'his day, and notable even in its present decline, he placed all 
the years of his active life, an oil lamp, to serve as a tiny light- 
house, and many a ship has known Capt. Haley's warning, and 
sheered off from the dangerous shore just in time. With that 
infernal propensity which men have to ascribe the best acts to 
bad motives, there are old Shoalers living to-day, who dare 
to say that King Haley did that thing to lure ships to destruc- 
tion, that he might profit by the wreckage ; but I can't match 
so devilish a proceeding with the rest of his life. For on the 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. 



little island which is a kind of side spur to Smutty Nose, and 
which bears the name of Malaga, old Samuel Haley, with in- 
finite toil and patience, constructed a tiny dock, in which a 
small schooner can lie, quite beyond the dash of the sea, and 
be in perfect security ; and in my old boating days, it was 
a, very tranquil place to steal into and rest, when I spent long 
summer weeks sailing round and round the islands. Its walls 
are all well laid ; and the courses of stone retain their old 
smoothness and finish, and they are the best monuments of ' 'King 
Haley." But on his grave-stone, I found this inscription : 

In memory of Mr. Samuel Haley, who died in the year i8ii, aged 84. 

He was a man of great Ingenuity, Industry, Honour and Honesty, true to 
his Country, and A man who did A great Publickgood in Building A Dock 
and Receiving into his Enclosure many a poor' Distressed Seaman and 
Fisherman in distress of Weather. 

I wish we might all be worthy of such an epitaph. "When 
our lives are ended and the sum of all our deeds is declared, 
shall all that we have done be equal to what that good man did 
down in those rocky islands, of whom it is said he built a dock 
as a great public good ? Happy is the man whose life's work 
is the equal of old Samuel Haley. 

His descendants still cling to the islands ; or rather have 
done so till within a year or two ; but those old names, Haley, 
Randall, and Caswell, will soon be lost forever to those rock 
which gave to their ancestors their homes. 

And that name Caswell makes me stop and think of that 
good and true man whom I was proud to call my friend, whose 
death, but three years ago, I still mourn as a fresh grief. I 
found him years ago, on these islands, a most modest, diffi- 



14 THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. 

dent kind of a man, whom every one called Origen, for there 
are no Misters on the islands, and ever}^ one is known by his 
Christian name. Origen Caswell was one of the bravest, tru- 
est men I ever met ; and I have often wished that Mrs. Stowe 
or Mrs. Whitney had seen him that they might make him fa- 
mous. At a time when drinking and brawling were universal 
among the Shoalers, Origen was an example of temperance 
and quietness ; trusted by all and loved by all. In his later 
years he kept a small hotel, called the Gosport House ; and 
inavillage where bars were kept even in private houses, Origen 
would not have a drop sold, even in his hotel. I have sailed 
with him time after time, hours and days, but I never heard 
an impure nor a hasty word from his lips. I always used to 
think that he was worthy to bear the name of 'Origen; and 
that that good old Church Father would not have been 
ashamed of the man who so many centuries after him should 
wear his name. And although the character of the Shoalers 
was a most unlovely one, and in some respects they were the 
most like barbarians of any men whom I have ever known in 
« civilized lands, I yet think that Origen Caswell w^as one of the 
noblest men I ever saw. I cannot criticise Dickens for taking 
little Nell out of one of the most degraded parts of London ; 
for I have seen a man, whose superior I have never met in 
moral worth and in spiritual attractiveness, come to his full 
manly bloom among those rough and degraded islanders. 

For being left alone, out there in the ocean, drink had full 
sway among them, and fightings and neighborhood quarrels 
were of daily occurrence. They had no great public interests, 
and so their little private interests were so magnified as to shut 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME, 15 



off the view of all else. In swearing, these Shoalers have 
long had an undisputed pre-eminence; and the aim and end 
of their intellectual proficiency were seen in the ingenuity with 
which new oaths could be coined. He who could swear the 
hardest was the best fellow. But they were not quite forgot- 
ten by the Christian world; and for a long time a missionary 
dwelt among them, trying to do them some good, and succeed- 
ing to a certain extent in humanizing them and bringing them 
under religious impressions. You will find the names of some 
of the good men who have lived and labored there, graven on 
the somewhat pretentious tomb-stones which mark the spot 
where they lie ; and it is in keeping with the character of the 
population amid which they labored that they were sent out 
there by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among 
the Indians of North America. When the Indians became 
scarce, it seems to have been taken for granted tlmt 'the peo- 
ple next to them in point of savagery were the inhabitants of 
the Isles of Shoals. 

I remember calling on one of the last of the missionaries who 
have lived there. He was not in, but his wife received me, 
and told me the story of their discouragements. Religion had 
touched the lowest point in the church, and the gospel got not 
even a hearing. "True," she said "there are plenty of sis- 
teren who come to meetin', but not a bretheren ever comes." 
And I remember that when I first knew the Shoals, fifteen 
years ago, and visitors had not begun to crowd the little 
stone church on the hill, during divine service the men would 
go in, while a committee waited on the rocks outside, spy-glass 
in hand, scouring the horizon; and if a black spot on the sea 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. 



indicated a school of mackerel coming to the surface, a low 
Avhistle was made on the fingers, and the worshipers 'within 
rose and withdrew, somewhat as firemen would if they should 
hear the alarm while they were in the house of God (if so 
strong a figure be admissible as a fireman being found within 
a church). This withdrawal used to be winked at by the good 
missionaries as a "work of necessity or mercy." 

Of these missionaries, the one whose name is the most fa- 
miliar to me is that of the excellent Dr. Beebe, whose hold on 
the islanders was most wholesome. He was a kind of king 
among them, for his good sense, excellent temper, and supe- 
rior education gave him a natural right to rule. He exercised 
more functions than I have ever seen combined -in any other 
human being, not to mention that he was, so far as the Isles 
of Shoals were concerned, as infallible as the Pope of Rome. 
I have forgotten all the titles he bore, and all the public du- 
ties he discharged, but some of them occur to me, and I will 
endeavor to set them down, with no more exaggerations than 
most historians are guilty of. Mr. Beebe was, in the first 
place, and par eminence, the minister; in the next place, he 
was the doctor, involving, of course, surgery and dentistry; 
and in order to qualify himself the better for these duties, he 
left the islands for two winters and pursued regular studies in 
the medical school of Harvard University. In the next place, 
he was the lawyer, being called in to act as umpire in disputes, 
to draw legal documents, and settle questions of equity. Of 
course he was a justice of the peace. He was also the teacher 
of the school ; and since there was no person competent to 
examine his qualifications, he was the school committee too. 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. I7 



As the islands were represented in the New Hampshire Leg- 
islature, he was chosen to go to "General Court." As the 
islands are also a United States port, he was the collector of 
revenue; also inspector of customs; also United States Com- 
missioner. As there was a gun on the island to bring possible 
smugglers to terms, he was the commandant of the military 
forces, and naval officer as well. Besides this, and keeping 
the only apothecary shop, being selectman, general letter- 
writer, and the father of a family, his time was tolerably well 
occupied. I used to think that the Shoalers might change 
Watts's well-known line to this : 

How doth the little busy Beebe 
Improve each shining hour, 

and have it just as true as the original strain. And yet, poor 
man, there is a pathos connected with him too ; for as you 
walk over the ledge of Star Island you come across a tiny hol- 
low, where in a space not eight feet square a little burial lot 
has been framed in, and a pair of marble doves and a suitable 
inscription tell you of that good man's household broken by 
death and two sweet children snatched away. After that the 
father fled from the place, and he has seldom been there since. 
I spoke a few moments ago of the gorgeous hotel bearing 
the stately and cosmopolitan name of the Oceanic, which now 
occupies a not inconsiderable part of Star Island, and looms 
up with its lofty storeys and central position so as to dominate 
the whole group. From the Boston or New York point of 
view it is certainly a success ; and whether in beds, or electric 
signals, or grand piano, or spacious dining hall, or noble pi- 



l8 THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME, 



azzas, or spacious corridors, or billiard and bowling alleys, or 
elegantly appointed tables, with their perfect galaxy of waiters, 
it has few, if any, superiors; yet I think that, even in all its 
elegance and solid comfort, I recall the old times, and the 
quaint taverns, and the heavy living, and the superb fish fare, 
with a kind of sigh. Would I go back to them? I hardly 
think it. Yet it is the fashion to mourn over the past, and to 
declare that when it went out all good went out, and the merry 
times departed. I will not join this caravan of mourners, ex- 
cept to say that the memory of those times fills me with a sense 
that they ought to have been pleasant, and that they really 
were pleasant. There was no style, no fashion, no excess of 
dress and ornamentation. People went out to the Shoals to 
enjoy the ocean and the rocks, not to waste the summer and 
criticise one another. Among the crowds which frequent the 
Oceanic, you not infrequently meet some who have never 
taken the pains to walk out and see and hear the dashings of 
the sea, and who pass days and weeks unconscious of the maj- 
esty which is not a quarter of a mile aw^ay. This very sum- 
mer, while the surge was playing over a range of forty feet be- 
tween the most outward turning point and the topmost line of 
the granite slope, and when the sound was like thunder, and 
the crash, and the roar, and the gathering volume of the re- 
turning waves, and the boiling foam, and the myriad tongues 
of water which lapped up into all the crevices, and the blue 
and green waves which were slowly coming in with the wrig- 
gle of a huge serpent, all held me fascinated hour after hour, 
there were many who had no care for these things, and never 
got beyond the sheltered piazza and the pages of an unbound 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. IQ 



novel. But not so was it in the olden time ; we went to see 
and to enjoy. And then, after a half day on the rocks, or out 
with the fishermen, taking in the cod and mackerel, a hundred 
in a half day, we returned to the Atlantic House, how good it 
was to see the heavily laden tables which good Dame Caswell 
spread three times a day before her uncritical and ravenous 
guests. I once pulled out a scrap of paper and a pencil and 
jotted down the various items of one of those old-time break- 
fasts — a bill of fare which I retain to the present hour, and 
which I will transcribe for your entertainment. It was as fol- 
lows : Fried fish, potatoes, boiled eggs, brown bread, hot bis- 
cuits, huckleberry cakes, corn bread, crackers, doughnuts, 
cookies, cream cakes, gold cake, two kinds of pies, cheese, tea 
and coffee. The supper was the same as the breakfast; I need 
only write ditto, ditto, to describe it. The dinner had all that 
the breakfast and supper had, only more — incomparable 
chowders, lobsters right from the sea, meats of various kinds, 
fish served in various ways, at least four kinds of pies and di- 
vers varieties of puddings. You saw at a glance that the 
Isles of Shoals lay within the geographical limits of Perpetual 
Pie ; and if you escaped without dyspepsia, it was the abund- 
ant exercise and the sea air which saved you. After seeing a 
valued friend eat two plates of chowder, two of fish, one of 
meat, four of pie, and one of pudding, I have simply been 
amazed at a climate which could let him off alive. Yet he 
seemed to thrive under the treatment, and came away pounds 
heavier than he went. 

I have spoken of the uncouth and almost savage character 
of the old Shoalers, whose race is now so nearly extinct. But 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. 



they were not all of this pattern, and I remember that Mrs. 
Thaxter, in her delightful Atlantic Monthly article, which after- 
wards ripened into her charming book on the Isles of Shoals, 
spoke of a village beauty,fso blithe and bonny, with so bright 
an eye, and so fair a cheek, and so trim a figure, and so grace- 
ful a bearing, that I was fain to see the possessor of so many 
graces. So happening at the Shoals the very August when 
her article came out, I wondered who it was that was worthy 
of so high an encomium. I read it over to Origen Caswell, 
who said at once that it must be "Jim Randall's wife," but 
he added, '* Celia Thaxter has been laying it on rather thick ; 
Cele was always given to coloring a little." Still, he con- 
fessed that " Miss Randall " was pretty ; there was no doubt 
of that. There was to be that evening a little fair down in one 
of the old fish houses ; would I like to look in and see these 
people and buy something to help them out in keeping the 
school this winter ? Of course I would ; and at the hour of 
early candle light I dropped in and looked over the slight as- 
sortment of bead work, and shell work, and fish-bone work 
and socks, and what might by a strong figure be called fancy 
work. Origen was there, but he whispered that the fair lady 
whom I sought had not yet come. Presently a brown-cheeked 
young woman came in, fresh looking and healthy, and comely, 
but not in my judgment quite sustaining Mrs. Thaxter's de- 
scription, yet Origen's nods and shrugs conveyed to me pretty 
clearly that that was she. She took her stand behind a wash 
tub filled with lemonade, of which I partook, at a moderate 
cost. But I found Mrs. Randall quite shy of conversation, 
and when I told her that I had had a great desire to see her 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME, 



on account of a description of her in the Atlantic Monthly, 
she said not a word ; and when I repeated it, she simply re- 
marked that she didn't take that newspaper. Then I tried to 
impress upon her that the Atlantic Monthly was the ne plus 
Tcltra of American letters ; and that to be even mentioned in 
it was an honor which some people would think worth while 
waiting for years to gain. No response ; a glum silence. 
Then I told her that this Atlantic Monthly, why the Atlantic 
Monthly is what the most distinguished men in the world 
write for, Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Emerson, Mr. Longfellow. 
"Don't know the gentlemen," quoth she in reply; "guess 
they must be stopping at the other island." After that I 
thought it best to cease praising the Atlantic Monthly and I 
told her that Mrs. Thaxter had written the article. That time 
I missed it still more widely. Mrs. Thaxter, the brilliant 
poet, was to her, simply Cele Thaxter, and my beauiy curled 
her short lip quite disdainfully at the idea of such praise being 
worth much. But she became more communicative bye and 
bye, especially after she found that I had once been the pastor 
of that North Church in Portsmouth, whose spire, hard on 
two hundred feet high, was the Shoalers invariable landmark 
in their fishing excursions, and I found that to have been the 
minister of a church with such a steeple, was worth more in 
that latitude than to be Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Emerson, or Mr. 
Longfellow. And it was quite beautiful and touching when I 
closed the conversation with this island beauty, and she said 
to me in a very modest and faltering way : Would you — ob- 
ject — to lend me — that paper — for a day — to read — it — to — 
my husband ? I gladly put the Atlantic into her hand, and 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. 



was rewarded by the sweetest of smiles. Poor woman, she 
lost that gallant husband of hers not long after, drowned, as 
so many Shoalers are ; and she has drifted away quite out of 
my knowledge. For when the new hotel was built, the pro- 
prietor bought up the whole Island, the town of Gosport in- 
cluded ; and the Shoalers left their tiny brown houses, and wan- 
dered forth, and now Gosport is but a great hotel with its out- 
lying houses. The proprietor and his sons, and a few perma- 
nent servants, nine in all, are the only voters and they have 
the privilege of sending a representative to the New Hamp- 
shire Legislature, and of exercising all the functions that the 
good Mr; Beebe ministered of yore. 

There is no bathing practicable at the Shoals, for the water 
is so cold that it cuts you like a knife. There are no oysters, 
but plenty of lobsters and I know not how many kinds of 
fish. There are a. few mosquitoes, but so far as my experience 
goes they are a stingless kind, their bark is worse than their 
bite. I have suffered so little from them that I acknowledge 
their existence only in deference to the sternest truth. But with 
this drawback, I know of no other — save hotel bills, and those 
do not trouble the most of the visitors long, seldom more 
than two or three days. At the end of that time they gener- 
ally cease, especially with married men and the heads of fam- 
ilies. There are no trees on the islands, but there is no lack 
of bushes, and if your imagination works energetically 
enough, there is no reason why a huckleberry bush should not be 
as imposing as an oak. There is little sickness on the islands, 
probably in part because it is very healthy there, and partly 
because there are very few inhabitants ; but even there it is 



THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. 23 



plain that death has gone before you, and one of the most im- 
pressive surprises which you can have in your life will come 
upon you when in wandering over Star Island you suddenly no- 
tice the liny bits of granite turned up on the edge, and dis- 
cover by the proximity of two more pretentious monu- 
ments, that you are treading on the dust of the dead. Very 
little soil is there on the islands, hardly enough to cover a body; 
but what there is has been carefully removed for the purposes 
of burial. I once had the good fortune to buy the only cleared 
field on the island, it was about as large as the land covered 
by an old fashioned country meeting house. I meant to build 
some day a tiny little summer cottage on it, but I never dared 
to dig it up, lest I should find it full of bones, for the time was 
when the population of the Isles of Shoals was measured by 
the hundreds and not by tens, and every inch of soil on the is- 
lands must be mixed with human dust. 

There is already a literature of itself, relating to the Shoals, 
but he who has read Mrs, Thaxter's little book, Mr, Haw- 
thorne's kindly reminiscences of Appledore and Mr. Leighton, 
in his American Notebooks, and James Russell Lowell's and 
Mrs. Thaxter's poems, needs little more to fill the romance 
and appreciate the beauty of this thronged resort. Most of 
those who have written, have confined themselves to Apple- 
dore, and the beauties of the rival island have never had 
worthy telling. But they are all fair to see, and pleasant to 
remember. And as my mind goes back to the slender shaft 
on White Island, with its strong light, which nightly does so 
well what Capt. Haley's lamp attempted so worthily, and I 
think of that little gem around whose white crests the ocean is 



24 THE ISLES OF SHOALS IN SUMMER TIME. 

always dashing up a still whiter crest of foam, and my mind's 
eye then runs north to Londoner's, lying in the line of the sun- 
set's glow, and as still farther away the shores of Rye and 
Hampton glitter in the morning with the flash from the many 
windowed hotels, or lie peaceful and low in the evening's 
paler light ; and then my eye wanders from the high land of 
Star to the great bulk of Appledore, audits fantastic and quaint 
hotel, the germ of which can still be seen to have been Mr. 
Leighton's plain house, now grown into the grand congeries 
of buildings, which so many hundreds remember with pleasure, 
and then between Star and Appledore the black coast of 
Smutty Nose, and its blacker houses, and Cedar, low and flat, 
and Malaga, so tiny as not to be quite made out by itself, and 
still northward, past Appledore, the dark crags of Duck Is- 
land, with their unceasing crest of foam, and the birds hover- 
ing over it, as they bring in fishes to feed their young, all this 
is a beautiful picture to look at, a great refreshment to have 
hung up before the mind's eye. It is but a few weeks in 
the year that these islands are presentable. Summer is as 
short there as she is beautiful, and the sunshine which falls 
there after September comes is joyless and cold. But from 
June to September, they who want the sea at its fairest, will 
find it there, and though there are grander scenes than these, 
there are few more placid and romantic, few more tenderly re- 
membered. 



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